Irish Attorney General Could Bring Genocide Charges Says Senior Counsel

By -
Read Our Letter to Attorney General

19th March, 2017 - Irish First Mothers has received senior counsel's advice that our group's March 5th letter to the Irish Attorney General seeking to bring prosecutions under the Irish Genocide Act of 1973 is well founded and an arguable case in law. 

Below we release four questions we posed relating to women's mass internment without trial in so-called "Mother and Baby Homes" and the answers by our senior counsel:

Question: Is the Irish Attorney General the responsible party for domestic Irish genocide prosecutions?

Senior Counsel: "Yes."

Question: Is our position arguable that "religious group" status within genocide law attaches to us? 

SC: "Yes."

Question: Is genocide law applicable in respect of the mass treatment of Irish unmarried mothers?
SC: "You make a case. Like the US Supreme Court did [with privacy law] in Roe v Wade, you are stretching existing genocide law to cover a real need."
Question: Are top-down genocide prosecutions legally preferable to ad hoc criminal ones?

SC: "The strategy makes sense."

We now request TD's to pose the following Dail Question:

Will the Attorney General take under consideration the question of prosecutions under the Genocide Act of 1973, as requested by the Irish First Mothers group in their 5th March 2017 communication to the AG office; and if not, why?

If prosecutions were deemed appropriate, the Attorney General could pursue charges for failure to prevent genocide, for conspiracy, for incitement and for the crime of genocide itself. But Irish First Mothers have identified no culpable parties and we leave such matters to the judgement of the Attorney General's office.
In our letter to the Attorney General, on 5th March 2017 we claimed the protection of Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the U. N. General Assembly  – and we demanded justice under the provisions of Ireland's 1973 enactment of that Convention.


We were subjected to religiously motivated, grossly criminal acts which meet the following criteria described under Section 2 of the Convention:

2(b): Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
2(e): Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I was Ann Lovett's Boyfrined

By -
Image
I was Ann Lovett’s boyfriend Ann Lovett died aged 15 in 1984 after giving birth at a grotto in Granard, Co Longford – a tragedy that continues to resonate. Today, Ann’s former boyfriend Ricky McDonnell speaks publicly for the first time 5th May, 2018 Rosita Boland 20 Images Video Richard “Ricky” McDonnell: “At the beginning I was silent out of fear, and then it was out of respect.” Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times Richard “Ricky” McDonnell is standing at the gate, staring at a house on Colmcille Terrace, Granard, Co Longford. There was a time, 34 years ago, when he knew this house inside out. It was here he had lived from the age of six to 17 – including several years on his own – until he had to leave. It was here he had spent many hours with his former girlfriend Ann Lovett, who died aged 15 after giving birth at the grotto in the town on January 31st, 1984. It was here, on that January day, Ricky McDonnell’s life changed u
Read more

IRELAND'S RELIGIOUS GENOCIDE OF UNWED MOTHERS

By -
Image
Guest Post | by Owen Felix O'Neill Between 5,000 and 7,000 healthy single mothers died in Irish unwed mothers institutions and w e need an honest public discussion of that appalling toll. I was born in such an institution: St. Patrick’s on the Navan Road Dublin, the biggest in the country. I spent my first 4 years there.  My mother, Norah, was 38 when she had me in 1954. It obviously wasn’t easy for her or the other women of these homes and although I never knew her, the following is based on my conversations over the years with other women who survived the homes. RELIGIOUS BUTCHERY -NOT MEDICINE In some London hospitals in the early 1940s, 50s and 60s, many of the midwives in training were Irish nuns. But once  their training was completed and  they  returned home to Ireland and  started to work at the nine main unmarried mothers homes they altered some of the surgical procedures they learnt in London to lethal effect.   An episiotomy, although no longer routine, is a f
Read more

Adopting Couple's New Baby Delivered by Miracle Stork

By -
Image
ADOPTING COUPLE'S NEW BABY DELIVERED BY MIRACLE STORK by Fintan Dunne, 30 July, 2105   In a world-first, a Minnesota couple are now celebrating the arrival of a new-born baby girl --which came via a miraculous delivery by stork! The couple, Sarah and David Olson already had two children - but had been battling a harrowing secret ordeal. They always knew they wanted three children, but they lacked that third infant which would make their family "complete". The Olsens had been trying in vain to conceive for what must have seemed an interminable eight long months before eventually deciding to adopt while aboard Sarah's birthday gift flight to New York.  That decision was partly inspired by Sarah's sister - who had already taken delivery of a child she had ordered online via Amazon.com in an inter-country adoption from China. But Sarah and David could hardly believe what happened next. After months of waiting, one Tuesday their Christian adoption consult
Read more